Ecology Action Announced as ICLEI Action Fund, Round One in the U.S.

Made possible through funding from Google.org, the ICLEI Action Fund will provide three awards of $1,000,000 each to nonprofit organizations to accelerate the implementation of a U.S. local government climate action plan while addressing inequality.

The initial round of abstracts yielded roughly 100 climate projects located in 34 states. “The abstracts represent a huge range of opportunities, which underscores the breadth and depth of both the opportunity and the challenge of climate change implementation at the local level,” said Angie Fyfe, ICLEI USA Executive Director. Another round for abstracts will be conducted in the coming weeks.

Eight finalists, listed below, are invited to submit a full proposal. The finalists best demonstrated local commitment to bold climate action, the ability to leverage the ICLEI Action Fund award, responsiveness to community needs, and deep carbon-reduction potential within the one-year implementation period. The finalists are now invited to submit proposals that advance their data driven concepts for equitable net-zero implementation.

ICLEI USA will support projects that do not advance to the next round through collaborations with potential partners and funders, including through ICLEI’s Transformative Actions Program.

The final awards are expected to be announced July 31, 2022.

Finalists
● Building Change, Inc., Prince George’s County, Maryland
● Ecolibrium3, Duluth, Minnesota
● Ecology Action, Watsonville, California
● Greater Rochester Housing Partnership, Rochester, New York
● Menlo Spark, Menlo Park, California
● Sierra Business Council, Sierra Nevada Region on behalf of the City of South Lake
Tahoe, California
● The Home Foundation, State College, Pennsylvania
● Western Colorado University Foundation, Gunnison, Colorado

The announcement of finalists was made May 12, 2022, during the ICLEI World Congress: Malmö Summit session Analyze, Act, Accelerate: Low-Emissions Style, which highlighted previous ICLEI Action Fund European sub-grantee HafenCity University “ANN Radar” project. Aimed at identifying spaces and districts that can be used as urban testbeds for prototyping energy innovations, ANN Radar targets the indirect impact enabling stakeholders to identify urban spaces as testbeds for sustainability and climate mitigation prototypes and pilots, which will serve the purpose of direct impact in climate mitigation and sustainability action.

Also highlighted during this session, the City of Broomfield, Colorado, USA, made innovative use of Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer data to develop a baseline greenhouse gas inventory, set a science-based target for 2030 reductions, and plan mitigation activities.